Sundance

Egyptian Theatre
Originally uploaded by Angela Hartwig

The hardest thing about being an artist that is just starting out is that there are no guarantees. When you make a movie for a studio, or if people know who you are then it’s pretty certain that your film no matter how big or how small is going to garner some attention. People are going to see it, festivals will premiere it, theatres will exhibit it.

On the other hand, films like our little film have to fight, push and shove to get any sort of attention. Our actors may be phenomenal, production value beautiful and story exceptional, but without a name or a studio behind it we have no guarantees. In a market where over 9,800 films applied to Sundance, a film shot in eight days on no budget, without famous names and or connections is like a needle in a hay stack. No one has found our needle yet.

I don’t normally talk about the festivals we don’t get into because I don’t really believe in dwelling on the negatives, but if you couldn’t already tell this one hurt. We didn’t get into Sundance. I’m not really shocked, in a way it’s kind of expected.

Out of 9,800+ films only 200 could be selected – that’s only about two percent of the films submitted. I can’t even imagine what it must be like for the programmers to have to chose films out of a selection like that, the pressure has to be enormous; however, I am sure that the films that made it to Sundance this year are phenomenal and more than deserve the honor. It’s still one of my dreams to someday get a film into their brilliant festival, but sadly, END will not be that film.

I wanted to take a moment and congratulate the filmmakers whose work made it into the festival this year and I look forward to seeing what unique visions each of them has. While they prepare for the cold weather and excitement of Park City, I will continue trying to get people to sort through the haystack and see END and all of the passion, talent and heart that everyone involved put on screen.

Carry On Wayward Son

Despite our best efforts, Christopher & I are having a tough time getting END seen. When you combine the economic crisis and the ever-changing face of independent film you’ll understand what we’re going through. Fewer films are being picked up because studios want guaranteed returns, and indy film is expecting more and more of its projects to have recognizable faces or names in them. It’s a hard market right now and I am beginning to understand more and more why you always hear indy filmmakers talk about the years they put into getting their film recognized.

I have always believed that great artists aren’t created by easy circumstances, and this is definitely not an easy situation; in the end however, I think we will all come out more accomplished artists for the difficulties we have to go through now.

Christopher and I are not giving up on END and we want you all to know that. We are going to keep pushing the film until we can’t figure out how to push it any further, and that time is not yet. However, we would greatly welcome your prayers, positive wishes and any other mojo you care to throw our way while we continue this fight.

This too...

Ebertfest Audience
Originally uploaded by rexb

So we didn’t get into FRED, but we knew that was still a possibility and we made it REALLY far so that in itself is a victory. Sure, it would be a much better victory to have actually made it into the festival, but we’re not going to dwell here.

There are thousands of independent films being sent to festivals right now; all of them just like us are hoping that the screeners and judges will see through any flaws or budget issues with their film and just recognize the care, hard work and fantastic essence that their movie actually has and select it for their festival. Every festival wants something different. So far no one has found END to be a great fit for their festival but that doesn’t mean anything about the quality or importance of our film.

I am still confident that festivals and distributors will want END; when we made END we made a very unique film, one that’s never really been done for this genre and that is going to take some people by surprise. However, END will have a great ending – this I know.

Fred

The festival names on this blog have been changed to protect the innocent and should the name be of an actual festival this is simply a coincidence. Eventually, festival names may be revealed, but only if END is accepted, it’s better that way. Christopher and I are submitting END to a slew of great festivals; we know realistically that we can’t get into all of them, and that no matter how great END is it just won’t be a fit for some festivals. We made a very different kind of movie. However, even though I am OK with this knowledge the waiting is killing me.

The Fred film festival is the festival we pushed END through the last throws of post-production in May so that we could meet their June deadline. We made it, applied and have been waiting ever since. According to withoutabox.com we were supposed to have been notified as to our festival acceptance or denial by August 15.

August 15 came and went and we heard nothing. I e-mailed and still nothing. I assumed END was out and the people at Fred were too nice and too busy to tell me we were out. Finally, Christopher called the people at Fred yesterday and got slightly more positive news.

We’re not out. There are some people that are definitely out and have already been told. END has made it through for one of the final stages and we’ll be notified when the last announcement is made in two weeks.

Whether END is selected or not, it’s kinda cool that our little movie has made it this far.

Anniversary

At the exact time this blog is published it will be exactly one year since we began principal photography on END. I am decidedly calmer as I am writing this than I was the night before we shot.

The night before we shot I discovered we were shorted by one light kit, which would severely limit our lighting situation. We also discovered the heat would melt the adhesive for the Velcro right off our barricade so we had to nail the wood into the walls of my friend’s house to barricade the door and window.

On our first day of shooting my make-up hero Daniella had to get ten actors though make-up for the first time. This along with normal first day issues meant that we were supposed to start shooting at ten a.m. but ended up starting after noon. Insanely, on a schedule that required us to shoot ten to fourteen pages a day we only ended up behind by one short scene, and needed to pick-up the reverse of a shot.

On day two we started on time but had perhaps our most shocking moment on set – Ashton & Dave had their game-changing argument in the film and while shooting the scene the boys accidently put Ashton through the dry wall of our key set. As you can imagine, I thought we were done for then and there. I immediately had to make the phone call I thought would kill my movie – I had to call Susan and tell her that we’d killed a wall in her house, and send cell phone pictures to David. Somehow, they decided a broken wall wasn’t a big deal, and they let us continue. Let no one call the Dunacheck’s anything less than amazing. Miraculously, we made it through the first weekend of shooting and somehow got completely back on schedule by the end of the second day – broken wall and all.

There were three more life-changing weekends of shooting after that and somehow I managed to come out the other end without hurting an actor, crew member or any more walls.

END refined my directorial skills in a way that I don’t think any other experience could have and I must say that the relationships, memories and final product that those eight shooting days gave me were worth any stress or eventual gray hair that may come my way. I can’t wait to see where END goes next.